Exit. Waiting for Museum Staff, 2005

Exit, Waiting for 624 Museum Staff, 2005

National Museum in Cracow, the Cracow common

From the letter to the curators: ‘The Museum building is ungraspable. Its structure is unclear. I want to stop at this stage of ignorance and maintain the sense of labyrinth: endless corridors, people sneaking through them, organically connected with the building, as if they were an integral part of it. Some of the staff virtually possess this space. All together, they are like a huge, dismembered body moving across the building in Brownian motion. If you are an artist, you can feel like an intruder here. What is guiding me is the need to see for myself all those who work at this Museum. I would like them to leave their desks, come out of the basements, rooms, and cubby-holes, leave their offices, cubicles, exhibition spaces, and workshops. I would like to see the Museum door open and a great crowd of people walk slowly down the stairs. I want little more than that from them, just to shake their hands and go to a pub on Krakowskie with them to drink some mulled wine. For a moment, this will distort the hierarchy of the building where they work. It will no longer matter who works on which floor and what is their position’. Of the Musem’s 624 staff, about 50 actually turned up.